The CFSI looked festive with Gattu, Rajan Khosa's latest children's flick for Children's Film Society of India making it to the Berlin Film Festival in the competition category. The other film in the festival this year is Don 2. And that makes it exciting as the Don of Roorkee and the Don of Bollywood make it to Berlin this year.Nandita Das shared encouraging words with director Rajan Khosa as he got ready to make it to Berlin for the fest.

Gattu has also been shot with real kids in Satti Mohalla in Roorkee. "Every object and actor in Gattu is local, except for a very few theatre actors," says the film's director Rajan Khosa. "I feel happy that we are getting an opportunity to showcase our film in Berlin. It is a matter of great prestige." Khosa is an alumnus of the Royal College of Arts, London, FTII, Pune, and NID, Ahmedabad, the film's director Rajan Khosa is also a voting member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and already has several international awards under his belt.

"For Gattu, we deliberately chose a small town, representative of majority of India. We scanned the streets and schools for kid actors, inviting them to join our film workshop. The film, we told them, will communicate the need to educate street children. Soon a dynamic was set up in the community, and all wanted to help out with the social cause," Rajan says. Even the lead actor who plays Gattu, Samad Mohammad is a class five student in a school in Sati Mohalla, Roorkee. He comes from a humble shopkeeper's family who are the local residents of the area.

Besides the involvement of local people, films like Gattu are unconsciously also setting new trends in using innovative technology to keep the budgets as low as possible. For instance, a scene that required a shot from the kite's point of view, as shot by a professional paraglider instead of using a helicopter! The paraglider used a 350 cc motor-cycle engine to take off with success and shot random aerial views," reveals Rajan.

The sheer effervescence of the film also appears to have infused a new excitement and energy in the CFSI, with its Chairperson, actor Nandita Das backing it all the way.

"At CFSI, we take it upon ourselves to showcase our films to as many children as possible. But other than our usual measures we feel that theatrical release is a must as well. Hence, for the first time, besides taking the film to festivals, we are also looking at a theatrical release, complete with marketing budgets for the film," she says.

For all those who cribbed about the absence of genuine children's films in India for all these years, the time to party seems to have begun in right earnest. Last year, it was "Stanley Ka Dabba", "I am Kalam" and "Chillar Party" that enticed the tiny tots with their parents into the theatres. And 2012, at its very beginning, has brought a pleasant surprise for kids in the form of Gattu, the first film produced by the Children's Film Society of India (CFSI) after 16 years. The last film it produced was Santosh Sivan's Halo in 1996.

The success of the three earlier films and the curiosity and commercial interest that Gattu has already aroused proves that Bollywood can no longer ignore this genre. But that is not all. A film about an illiterate kid who fulfils his dream using his passion and street savvy, Gattu also continues a very encouraging trend – that of involving lay persons and local communities in the creative process of filmmaking. The film shows that a deftly crafted story can pay rich dividends even with laypersons as the "stars."

While Stanley Ka Dabba was shot in an actual school with real school children as its characters, Gattu has also been shot with real kids in Satti Mohalla in Roorkee. "Every object and actor in Gattu is local, except for a very few theatre actors," says the film's director Rajan Khosa. He is an alumnus of the Royal College of Arts, London, FTII, Pune, and NID, Ahmedabad, the film's director Rajan Khosa is also a voting member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and already has several international awards under his belt.

The storyline of Gattu goes thus. Gattu is an orphan child worker from a small town, where the sky is full of kites, and all the kids are obsessed with kite-flying. There is a kite called Kali that rules the skies. No one knows who flies Kali. No one can defeat Kali. An illiterate street urchin, Gattu, takes up the challenge. With neither money nor education on his side, he sets out for his goal. And with the support of a solid, government institution like CFSI, Gattu and others of his ilk can surely aim for the skies of Bollywood.